


Hocus pocus

by idioticfangirl



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec-centric - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bad Pick-Up Lines, F/M, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4622856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idioticfangirl/pseuds/idioticfangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Alec finds a time capsule in his back garden, natural curiosity leads to a discovery of the treasures inside, and maybe more.  Coincidence, or magic?</p>
<p>(I don't know how to describe it it's a time capsule au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hocus pocus

When Izzy had arguments with their parents, she flounced off to meet a boy, most recently Simon, and Alec had no doubt that he wore the signs of her frustration as love bites and scratches down his back and a smug grin that said 'I'm sleeping with a really hot girl'. When Jace fought with them, he took his anger out on the gym punching bags, coming home with sore knuckles but an easy, tired grin where he had left with a frown and harsh words at anybody that so much as looked at him.

When Alec had a disagreement with his parents, he gardened. He used to go to the firing range, but he couldn't afford to keep it up and he detested asking his parents for money. He had tried reading, but only physical activity would relieve the deep-set feelings of anger and desperation that his parents made him feel. So he went outside, come rain or shine, and dug a hole so deep it was practically a trench, digging and digging until he was tired and sore and had forgotten his pain, by which point he filled the hole back up and returned to his room. It was a habit from when he was little and he would 'dig for gold', and made no difference in the harsh soil where not even grass grew because his mother had tried to grow plants once and killed everything that had ever had any chance of living there. That was probably symbolic of something.

The most recent argument, the one that had set off this particular bout of intense digging, was about a topic they fought about a lot, Alec's sexuality. He had come out to his parents in a desperate attempt to stop the feeling of wrongness that overcame him whenever they talked about him having a girlfriend, or when they told him he could tell them anything. To his face, they had accepted him, but he had heard them fighting and crying over it behind closed doors, and the frustration that his sexuality was seen as such a burden on them was overpowering. Every second word to each other sparked a fight these days.

Alec was still digging furiously when his shovel hit something hard with a clang, and the impact juddered up his arms. Already covered in dirt and curious about what could possibly be under the soil save a particularly large and hollow-sounding rock, Alec knelt down in the hole, brushing off the topsoil that covered his findings. 

What he uncovered was a metal cylinder, medium size. He pulled it out, dusted it off and decided that he would open it in his bedroom, flinging the earth haphazardly back into his hole before running up to his room to discover what the treasure was. Unsure of why he was so excited about this, maybe it was that he had finally found the gold he had been digging for for so many years, he turned it round and round in his hands, finally locating a line at the top where it should twist open. 

However long it had been in the ground had clearly taken its toll on the metal, and the once easy-to-open top became a death trap where his hands scrabbled for purchase, but finally, with an ear-splitting screech, the top twisted off to reveal the contents.

On top was a note that said, 'Magnus Bane's guide to wizardry. All you need to learn everything from disappearing coins to demon summoning!" The back of the note read, "Hello lucky person who has discovered this time capsule! I hope you enjoy learning these tricks as much as I did!" Alec couldn't help but grin at the childish writing and the naive way the time capsule had been left for others to cherish. Still grinning, he set the note aside and reached for the next thing in the box.

Most of the 'magic' within the box were children's party tricks that took Alec not ten minutes to learn (Jace walked in at one point as he was yelling abracadabra at a rubber and immediately walked out again). It was clear that the time capsule had been added to over time, however, as the tricks became more difficult, and a few pages ripped out of books or printed off the internet spoke of the ways to summon a demon, the charlie charlie challenge, bloody Mary, and a few others that were less well known but seemed just as mundane. Magnus, whoever he was, had put a lot of effort into his time capsule, writing notes about everything and helping the inexperienced reader/wizard along.

Isabelle called Alec down for dinner and he quickly replaced the tricks in the time capsule and hid it in his wardrobe, not wanting his parents to see it even though he didn't have a reason to keep something so trivial from them.

 

Over the next few days, Alec spent most of his alone time in his room, perfecting the tricks that Magnus was talking him through, feeling that he owed it to him to learn the tricks to the best of his ability and honor the love that he must have had for the tricks. He decided that, once he had learnt them, he would either bury it again or give it to a charity shop, so that maybe someone more of the intended age range could have them. He would have been content with this, too, if it wasn't for a coincidental conversation with Izzy the next week.

"We need to stop going to that club, Pandemonium," she announced over dinner. His mum and dad were at work, as usual, so it was just the three of them.

"But you like it there?" Jace replied.

"They advertise the worst things! Look at this, I got a leaflet about a magic show! Do I look like I want to go to see some guy called Magnus Bane do tricks? I want to go clubbing!"

"Magnus Bane?" Alec yelped.

"Calls himself 'The High Warlock of Brooklyn'. What a tosser," Jace muttered conversationally, beginning to tear the leaflet.

"No, no wait!" they both looked at Alec in surprise, "We have to go!"

"No, we really don't. Just because they gave us the leaflet -"

"I was digging the other day and I found a time capsule and it has loads of his old magic tricks in and I want to tell him I found it," blurted Alec, not even pausing for breath.

Looking incredibly put upon, Jace and Izzy agreed.

 

 

It wasn't until he was standing outside the stage where Magnus was performing in half an hour that Alec began to wonder if this was a good idea. He had never been particularly impulsive, always spending his time warning Jace and Izzy away from the stupid things which they inevitably did anyway, and going up to a random stranger to announce that he had found a time capsule of theirs now seemed stupid, and slightly stalker-ish.

Izzy hadn't been dragged away from what had been a perfectly promising night clubbing to give up now, though, so in they went. 

Soon after they sat down, the lights went black, and from the ceiling, surrounded by mist, descended someone who had to be Magnus. Sure enough, he introduced himself as the High Warlock and began to perform his tricks. Some of them Alec recognised from the time capsule and, to his delight, could even replicate, but Magnus had definitely improved since he had left it and most of the tricks left them all gasping in wonder.

The show ended too soon and then Alec was being shoved in the direction of backstage by an impatient Jace. He stammered an explanation to the man standing outside, showing him the note that had been with the time capsule, and was let in. He stumbled to a stop immediately in the room, brought to a halt by the sight before him.

Clothes covered the room in heaps, all glittery and feathery and obnoxiously bright. Magnus himself, sitting in a chair at the far end, was wearing an ensemble that Alec wouldn't be seen dead in, yet he made it look almost fashionable. Magnus himself seemed about nineteen, with brown skin and black hair that had been carefully spiked. His eyes were slightly disconcerting as Alec had apparently caught him in the middle of taking his contacts out, with one eye a normal amber colour and the other green and slitted like a cat's eye, presumably to add to his already unusual appearance. Alec, who always had trouble talking in front of attractive people even when they weren't as good looking as Magnus, found himself at a loss for words and instead held out the time capsule like a peace offering.

"Is that mine?" Magnus asked, rising from the chair as he took the capsule and turned it over in his hands, smiling nostalgically. Alec nodded dumbly.

"I assume you looked through it?" Alec nodded again.

"What is your name?"

"Alec. Alexander. Alex."

"Well, Alexander, it seems that my tutorial was even better than I expected. You must be an excellent wizard."

"W-why is that?"

"You've made my heart diisappear and reappear inside your chest."


End file.
